Herbert Cowans
American jazz musician
Herbert "Kat" Cowans or Cowens (May 24, 1904 – January 23, 1993) was an American jazz drummer born in Texas.
Cowans worked as a shoeshine boy as a child. His first professional engagement as a drummer was with the Satisfied Five, a local Texas ensemble. After moving to Wichita Falls, he played in Frenchy's New Orleans Jazz Band, then worked with Charlie Dixon. He quit Dixon's ensemble to finish high school while still in his teens. He played in theater orchestras early in the 1920s, then moved to New York City to play with Cleo Mitchell in the Shake Your Feet revue. Following this, he did work with the Kansas City Blackbirds, Jimmy Cooper's Black and White Revue, and Eubie Blake in addition to leading his own band (which included Sylvester Lewis among its members).
In the 1930s Cowans played with Fats Waller and Stuff Smith, and joined Eddie Heywood's band for recordings behind Billie Holiday in 1941. He worked with Garvin Bushell in 1942, then played in the pit orchestra for the Broadway show The Pirate. Cowans led a USO band in 1943, touring military bases worldwide, then led small ensembles for several decades thereafter.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Herbert Cowans” as american jazz musician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american jazz musician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5733826. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1993, 1941 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “Herbert Cowans” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.